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OK, what's the deal with this old fogey, people are talking about him in the characters thread about being one of the most powerful people, I have never in all the times 'ive played through the game, given him anything more than his basic spells and what not, I just don't like the guy i guess... How do you use him to make him one of the most powerful?

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I wouldn't qualify him as the most powerful, but I use him for his Lores. Among my favourites are Pearl Wind and Big Guard.

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I mentioned it in the tier list I made. Strago is actually one of the weakest characters. Lores like Pearl Wind, Force Field, Big Guard, Grand Train, Quasar, and whatnot. An easy way to make Strago awesome fairly early on is to take a trip to Solitary Island with him and Relm in your party, and have Relm Sketch each of the enemies there. That'll get Strago to learn Pearl Wind and Big Guard and instantly make him a useful character.

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His versatility is what makes him useful. Unless you use espers to learn spells (which is a major issue with the game; characters like Strago easily get overlooked when everyone else has every spell the game has to offer.)

His lores are very varied and allow for powerful healing spells as much as destructive insta-kill spells or high-end damage spells. Which is great in a natural magic game, as not even Terra/Celes can rack up this kind of stuff (excluding Terra's Ultima at higher levels.) But in a normal game, I found him to be little more than a curiousity.

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Strago's a solid all-purpose mage, and his Blue Magic grants him access to a few unique, versatile spells (as well as a lot of really useless ones). With the right combination of armor (or a Merit Award) and some basic Esper learned magic, Strago can be a powerful character later in the game. Big Guard is a good all-purpose defensive spell for a tough boss battle, and Grand Train is fine for some non-elemental mass-damage cheapery. Thanks to the structure of the game and his own resourceful abilities, Strago stands as one of the very few truly useful Blue Mage characters in the Final Fantasy series.

This post has been edited by Super Moogle on 12th April 2005 22:47

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Strago is powerful for the reason that he has a bunch of Lores (a.k.a. blue magic, enemy skills, etc.). While some are pretty darn useless (e.g. Pep Up, Exploder), others are quite useful:

Aqua Rake: your first water-elemental attack, not counting Bismark.
Cleansweep: a more powerful water-elemental attack, and the only other one not counting Bismark. (CoN says that this is also wind-elemental; is that actually true? I haven't seen that anywhere else.)
Step Mine: a good spell for dealing MASSIVE non-elemental damage (despite the fact that it can become quite expensive).
GrandTrain: a quite powerful non-elemental spell on all enemies.
Big Guard: sets 'Safe' and 'Shell' statuses on all allies simultaneously.
Pearl Wind: heals each party member by the amount of Strago's current HP.
Stone: does a decent amount of damage and usually confuses all enemies.
Aero: Your only true wind-elemental attack, other than the Wind Slash katana (I forgot its name). W. Wind doesn't really count, since it simply deals 90% damage to all allies and enemies, and Merton is wind- and fire-elemental and also hits both sides.
Quasar: said to be yet another kickass non-elemental magical attack, but I've never used it before. (A very rarely-encountered lore.)

As for his character, Strago is somewhat interesting, although not the most in-depth character in the game. But old men wielding powerful magic are always cool, right?

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Again though the greatness of FFVI is that any character can be made the most powerful. I have made Locke the strongest fighter when he starts out as one of the weakest and Cyan a powerful magic user which he starts out very weak. It all depends on how you build characters.

With Strago though, he is already a powerful magic user and some of his Lores are great, basically the ones GMH mentioned above. I never really liked using Strago that much for some reason, but you gotta admit his scene in the ending is great.

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Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 12th April 2005 20:34)

Cleansweep: a more powerful water-elemental attack, and the only other one not counting Bismark. (CoN says that this is also wind-elemental; is that actually true? I haven't seen that anywhere else.)

CleanSweep is pure Water-elemental, Aqua Rake is the Water/Wind-elemental.

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